by Cecilia Woloch
And these are my vices:
impatience, bad temper, wine,
the more than occasional cigarette,
an almost unquenchable thirst to be kissed,
a hunger that isn't hunger
but something like fear, a staunching of dread
and a taste for bitter gossip
of those who've wronged me--for bitterness--
and flirting with strangers and saying sweetheart
to children whose names I don't even know
and driving too fast and not being Buddhist
enough to let insects live in my house
or those cute little toylike mice
whose soft grey bodies in sticky traps
I carry, lifeless, out to the trash
and that I sometimes prefer the company of a book
to a human being, and humming
and living inside my head
and how as a girl I trailed a slow-hipped aunt
at twilight across the lawn
and learned to catch fireflies in my hands,
to smear their sticky, still-pulsing flickering
onto my fingers and earlobes like jewels.
Photo Credit: "Fireflies on the Water," installation with 150 lights, mirrors and water, by Yayoi Kusama, (b. 1929), a 2002 installation that measures 115 by 144 by 144 inches and consists of mirrored walls, 150 lights and water. It has been purchased by the Whitney Museum of American Art with funds from the Postwar Committee and the Contemporary Committee and partial gift of Betsy Wittneborn Miller.